1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to composites and particularly, but not limited to, fibre reinforced building composites.
2. Description of the Related Art
Any discussion of the prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.
Fibre reinforced cement (FRC) is an extremely popular building product.
The applicant along with other various parties have developed a variety of techniques for producing fibre reinforced cement building products and tailoring those FRC products to the particular environment of use.
There are still, however, certain limitations with regard to FRC products. They have limited acoustic, thermal and fire retardant properties. They can exhibit limited workability and generally lie in the medium density range (around 1300 kg/m3) or higher (compressed densities of around 1700 kg/m3).
Generally, the properties of fibre cement are altered by addition of other materials eg different fibres, fillers etc or altered with different production techniques. Such alterations to the FRC formulation, however, can be expensive to develop in order to ensure no detrimental side effects arise from such new formulations. Alterations in production methods or equipment are also expensive and time consuming to develop. Such techniques also do not provide for true “tailoring” of the FRC product. It is, of course, inappropriate to shut down an entire production line, for example, to produce a small batch of FRC product tailored to a specific use.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome or ameliorate at least one of the disadvantages of the prior art, or to provide a useful alternative.